Seals

<a href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/sea-animal-dog-zoo-23087/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Source</a>

If you whistle, Scotland has them

dark by the seas’ rim:

bull-seals and females,

unhurried by the rush and reach

of tides that have touched into foam (with pails

and white ponds) the vast seas’ eddying reaches.

We, by the beaches and boles of the bounded earth,

sing softly, and see their black heads’

shining and lining, the white-horses’ waving waves

of them.

From under the sea-beds

and tusks of rock, we have reached,

by a whistle, the mackerel-hunters,

creatures mysteriously still.

We silence ourselves, listening,

watching their dark-shaped

glistening, and going down

at will.

(from “The Light Of Day” –  previously unpublished poems – to be published later this year)